FOR SPIRITUAL SEEKERS 30 MAY 2014

FOR SPIRITUAL SEEKERS: rediscovering the pt. of it all. The claim is that a certain airplane can fly at 35,000 ft. The direct way to examine this claim is to see if the plane will reach 35,000 ft. & fly. To argue that the firm that made it has different versions of their charter, unsavory employees, & mistakes in their training manual misses the pt. Likewise, Christ directed people to test his words, and that if they were tried, people would discover his words were from God. O.K. the skeptic says we don’t know what his words are. That is precisely my argument…rather than nit pic the authenticity of his words, why not test them. Rather than argue who owns the plane on the runway, test whether the plane will fly at 35,000 ft. All other talk is beside the point. The truth of his words should stand on its own, speak for themselves, they need no defense.

PROVERBS DO NOT ASK FOR PROOF, THEY DO NOT REASON OR ARGUE. For example, one often hears on the street, “What goes around, comes around.” This common proverb expresses Christ’s thought, “Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” Other examples of proverbs that Christ spoke are: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” “If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness.” And one more, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” When we take Christ’s teachings on their own terms, we discover why the merits of his teachings were what eventually attracted the powerful elite & well-educated of ancient Rome to him. It also explains why his critics were busy distorting & misrepresenting his words.

THE WORLD’S POLITICAL POWER SEES THE VALUE of his words. Napoleon I was a Freemason who in 1791 joined the Illum.’s Jacobin Club. It’s membership was mostly illuminated Freemasons like Rabaud Saint Etienne & Bloodlines’ mmbrs like DuPont. Napoleon, ruler over most of Europe, said, “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires. But on what did the creations of our genius rest? On force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire on love; and at this hour millions would die for him….With an empire so absolute, he has but one aim—the spiritual perfection of individuals.”

THE WORLD’S ECONOMIC POWER SEES THE VALUE of his words. J.P. Morgan, the best known Amer. banker of his time, dominated corporate America. AT&T, GE, & Intern. Harvester were but a few of his companies. The bank his father created managed Rothschild money. In 1895, Morgan got the U.S. govt. to buy 3.5 million ounces of Rothschild gold. After working for the Illum. for yrs., J.P. Morgan formally affiliated w/ them in London in 1899. He was of the elite Pierpont family, & his nephew Pierpont Morgan Hamilton was a desc. of Alex. Hamilton. Jekyll Is. was owned by the low key Payseurs of the Merovingian Holy Bloodline. Morgan had a private estate & hunt club on their island, which was used to brainstorm the creation of the Federal Reserve. When J.P. Morgan, Sr. died, the first paragraph of his will stated, “I commit my soul unto the hands of my Saviour [Christ]…I intreat my children to maintain and depend at all hazard and at any cost of personal sacrifice the blessed doctrine of the complete atonement for sin through the blood of Jesus Christ, once offered, and through that alone.”

THE WORLD’S THINKERS see the value of his words. The famous secular Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), who laid the groundwork for Biblical criticism & the idea of separation of church & state stated, “To know the ideal Christ, namely the eternal wisdom of God…which is manifest…especially in Jesus Christ…” His words remind me of a previous Jewish scholar who at first hunted & killed believers in Christ, but came to look up to Christ so much he called him “the wisdom of God” “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom & knowledge.” What wisdom? Aristotle said, “The greatest thing by far is to be master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others. It is the mark of genius.” Jesus’ teachings are full of deep metaphors that permit a child to learn their truths, and the seeker to never plumb the profound depths of his words. His words, with their unique air of authority, are relevant to all races, & all men at any time. His words are full of surprises that break one’s natural thinking & jolt one out of one’s complacency. His words could catch & hold the attention of large (even hungry) crowds, and still have that power. Their truths have a way of haunting the skeptic’s mind.

SAMPLE OF ONE OF CHRIST’S IMPRESSIVE METAPHORS. He told his disciples that he had spiritual nourishment of which they did not know. In hot dusty Palestine, the joy of a drink of cool water was well known. Christ used a complex metaphor with a woman whose interest was drinking water. Yahshua said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life….If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” While his words are not in the classic metaphoric form, they are actually 4 metaphors built into one; & this complex metaphor impacts any listener, whether he is a skeptic, seeker, new or mature believer. You are thirsty. I am your supply of water for that thirst. It is satisfying for both long & short term needs. And then the surprise: My living water is actually an outflowing stream that will flow out of you to meet the needs of others! This is the kind of genius which Aristotle referred to. One can dismiss Christ’s words mentally, but their impact has a way of lingering!

TRUTH IS ALWAYS TRUTH. The truths of Christ’s words echo around the world in the sayings of non-Christians. While collectively the wisdom of the world echos his truths, Christ stands above all others. Let us take a few of his teachings as examples of this. REPENTANCE. A key note of Christ’s teachings is repentance which connects to Christ’s thinking that life is a workshop where we can improve our character to supply us the means to join in God’s plans. Real change can happen (regeneration, a new birth, sanctification) in contrast w/ an endless repeating cycle. There is hope, according to Christ, for victory that overcomes evil. Plato writes of a “turning around of a soul” in Republic, vii, 521c. Srimad Bhagavatam, xi,xiv, states, “One must be pure in heart to enter into the life of the spirit…” And Schuon in L’Oeil du Coeur, p. 209 writes, “There is in man something which must be converted, or which must be transmuted: it is the soul as love—the soul as will—whose center of gravitation is the ego.”

PERFECTION. Yahshua taught, “Be ye…perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Plato taught, “A man ought to live always in perfect holiness.” The holy man of the Oglala Sioux, Black Elk, taught, “Of all the created things or beings of the universe, it is the two-legged men alone who, if they purify and humiliate themselves, may become one with—or may know—Wakan-Tanka.” (The Sacred Pipe…p. 138)

GOD’S GRACE. This is Christ’s teaching that of myself I can do nothing. Ananda Moyi said, “The vision of God is possible only through His Grace.” Abu Sa ‘id ibn Abi ‘l-Khayr said, “When God shall free him [man], this is not affected by a man’s exertion, but by the grace and help of God.” And as a final example, Sri Ramakrishna said, “You may try thousands of times, but nothing can be achieved without God’s grace. One cannot see God without His grace.”

KNOWLEDGE CAN BE MISUSED, WISDOM CAN’T. Examples of worldly echoes of other teachings of Christ could be also be provided, but enough of the point has been made. Christ’s words have been a lifeline to countless people drowning in the rough seas of life. His words have repaired dreams & given hope. They have healed broken lives. They have released the power of God in people’s lives. But not everyone is interested. Christ said, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice…Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.” Because of the wisdom in his words, and the power of that wisdom, his words have had everlasting power. When Yahshua came among mankind, slavery was widespread & accepted as the norm. Even the Scriptures accepted it. But he taught about the Brotherhood of all mankind, and the power of that higher truth meant that eventually slavery would cease. It did, and to a large part due to the inspiration of Christ’s teachings. He gave the World a living Spirit of Truth. This is the source of the true new humanity.